Manitoba farmers racing to finish harvest

Rain and strong winds in Manitoba’s eastern and Interlake regions and snow in the Northwest slowed the harvest.

In its weekly crop report, Manitoba Agriculture Cereal Crop Specialist Ann Kirk said roughly 93 per cent of the crop is harvested, and farmers are getting close to wrapping things up.

“Over the past week, we did have fairly good harvest conditions. We did have rain and then snow which put a pause on harvest over the weekend and the beginning of this week,” Kirk said.

Harvesting of spring cereals are basically complete and canola is very close to finished. The dry beans are about 96 per cent complete. Soybeans are also very close at about 90 per cent.

“What’s left is about 25 per cent of the flax crop, 80 per cent of the sunflowers and about 60 per cent of the grain corn , so we have made good progress, and it’s just those remaining later season crops to come off,” Kirk added.

Spring cereals had a very long harvest season, and as a result, some of the crops are of poorer quality.

“Some of those cereals did sit out on fields and were wet quite a few times prior to being harvested, so there was some loss of quality in those spring cereals,” she said. “But, in terms of the later season crops like what we’re harvesting right now, the soybeans and corn, no major quality issues there.”

Kirk said over the next week or so she expects there will be a big push towards grain corn, finishing off those remaining soybean acres and getting into the sunflowers.